Charlemagne

The great emperor of Franks, Charlemagne...Let's discuss him here with all his pros and cons

Different times; different world.

A great weakness of the forums is that people tend to view history as seemless.  That the same attitudes and values of 2006 applied in 800AD or 400BC, or even 1920.

Historical trends and the lives of personalities need to be considered in the context of when, and in the circumstances of which, they happened.

If Genghis Khan were alive today, he would be a cellmate of Slobo.  (and you probably wouldn't like him much)

The thing is we are progressivly getting softer. Any type of violent conduction of state affair is dennounced as authoritarian and on the edge of legality. Evolution takes sacrifice, even if that sacrifice is imposed by a third party. Communication takes a great part of the blame, since it has progressivly evolved and opened a lot of eyes to the common folk. Men like Charlemagne and many others before and after him provided his contemporaries with the image he and his team wanted to pass. To make it simple, one can just refer to old saying "Ignorance is happiness".

Most great men of the past were skilled, yet ruthless polticians or warriors, and probably very similar to the despots of today. It's just that the more comunication and and awareness we have of the present, the less harmful historic figures seem. Who knows how men like the 1930's dictators will be seen in the future compared to the men of that time?   

One thing to bear in mind about relative levels of "authoritarianism" is the degree to which it can be imposed. In Charlemagne's time, it was difficult enough to impose even the most basic regulatory systems. Authority couldn't even be spread by force alone, it was even more basic than that: it had to spread by a reputation for the ability to impose force. The ability of a central authority to even have knowledge of events and the behaviours of the populace was absurdly minimal compared to today. There may have been little freedom on paper, but in many of these times and places, there were wide latitudes of behaviour simply because there was no ability to regulate. Much of this isn't recorded, simply because there was no way to track any of it or have knowledge of it.

Take serial killers, for instance. The first appearance of one is Jack the Ripper, and it happened in what was the most technological city of its time, London, during a time of great advances in communications technology and strong developments in institutions which allowed authorities to monitor public order. They certainly existed before that, they just couldn't be detected. It's no mystery that their numbers are increasing with the advancement of forensic technologies and it's certain that their incidence will continue to climb, but it's a good guess that their actual incidence is relatively constant.

Alternately, contrast the authoritarianism of regimes like those from the 30s and 40s, the Nazis and the Stalinist Soviets, with the authoritarianism of present day, Western states. Putting aside aims and goals for the moment, it is immediatly obvious that even the most liberal of modern Western states knows far more about the private lives of its citizenry and is far more capable of actually enforcing laws to govern their behaviour than any of the early totalitarian regimes. They may not have the interest in enforcing the same things, but the amount of information they possess about citizens' private lives and their ability to modify behaviours is far more potent.

The notable historical figures of the past would, today, seem much like some of the more brutal Third World dictators, who are in the same position of having to exert a reputation for authority through incidents rather than actual authority and control. They don't have the institutions or technology to achieve the levels of control more advanced states do.